last updated: Tuesday 14 July 2009, 14:14pm

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Footage of Iraqi detainees' abuse shown

Footage aired during an inquiry into the death of an Iraqi in British military custody shows a UK soldier screaming abuse at detainees.

Baha Mousa, 26, died while being detained by soldiers from the former Queen's Lancashire Regiment in 2003. He sustained 93 separate injuries, including fractured ribs and a broken nose.

His 22-year-old wife had died of cancer shortly before his detention, meaning his two young sons, Hussein and Hassan, were orphaned.

In the footage, six prisoners - one of them Mr Mousa - are seen with sandbags on their heads and their backs to the walls while spread around the edges of a bare room. Their arms are secured with plastic handcuffs and the sound of moaning, whimpering and panting is heard.

The detainees, all dressed in shirts and trousers and with their shoes removed, are forced to maintain 'stress positions' and the soldier, identified as Corporal Donald Payne, formerly of the regiment, paces toward one prisoner who is standing with his back to a window.

He stands over the prisoner and shouts: 'Get f****** down! (Don't) f****** do that! Get down!' At this point he pushes down on the detainee but when the man slips to the floor he shouts: 'Get up! Get up!'

Cpl Payne switches his attention to the prisoner to his left who is pictured with his legs bent, back to the wall. The soldier is heard shouting: 'Get up you f****** ape, now! Get up now!'

He screams at the man repeatedly to 'Get up!' before pulling him up and pushing him back against the wall.

Cpl Payne's face is obscured in the video because of reporting restrictions. He is wearing a black T-shirt, camouflage trousers and boots. A civilian Iraqi interpreter who appears momentarily before the camera also has his face obscured for security reasons.

The wide-ranging inquiry into Mr Mousa's death and the British Army's use of so-called conditioning techniques to 'soften up' prisoners for interrogation is taking place in central London.

Mr Mousa was working at the Ibn Al Haitham hotel in Basra, southern Iraq, in September 2003 when it was raided by British forces looking for weapons.

The soldiers found assault rifles and pistols in a safe. Hotel staff insisted they were used for security but Mr Mousa and several of his colleagues were taken to the British military base at Darul Dhyafa.

Seven soldiers faced a court martial at Bulford Camp in Wiltshire on war crimes charges relating to the receptionist's death. All but one were cleared on all counts in March 2007.

The Ministry of Defence agreed in July last year to pay £2.83 million in compensation to the families of Mr Mousa and nine other Iraqi men mistreated by British troops.

Mr Mousa's father, Iraqi police colonel Daoud Mousa, said: 'I think of my son every day. When British soldiers killed him, I lost a great friend as well as a son. Now I am alone with his two young orphaned children.

'God willing there will at long last be accountability for what happened to my son.'

© Independent Television News Limited 2009. All rights reserved.